Apparently there is an open beta going of for Chronicles of Spellborn. Hmmm, I could have sworn I signed up for the beta, but never got an invite. Anyway, I'm kind of busy right now, and couldn't play much, so it's all good. Especially since I found this excellent Chronicles of Spellborn preview on A Ding World.

I like the idea of getting a stat bonus for not dying. And of course the rotating hotkey bar is an interesting combat mechanic. But when I read that you'll have to move in combat to avoid blows, I'm not so excited about this game any more. I'm too old for "action combat" with lots of button mashing, that idea already killed Age of Conan for me.

As the NDA is now lifted.I have been in the closed beta for some time and didn't really care for the combat.It seems very twitch based (not a problem I thought) - yet the repsonse from client to server and back wasn't very good in beta for me (i.e. laggy) therefore it didn't seem to work - and I rarely tried to avoid attacks.It may well now be fine as I haven't played for a few weeks now.but it certainly put me off.

I installed the beta about a week ago. Took me about an hour to get it to run and when I finally did it crashed within the first 5 minutes. Now, these are issues that can be fixed, but with Moria calling me back, it missed that all important chance to make a good first impression.

Got an invite for the beta about two weeks ago I think. Played around a bit for an hour or so, and it didn't exactly excite me in any way. The combat system seemed clumsy and the quest were about the same as what we have all seen before.

I was nominally in the beta for nearly two years, but there wasn't an actual beta to test for the majority of that time. When the game was up and running, I simply didn't like the core combat mechanic (with a reticle that supposedly allows you to aim). I sincerely wish them the best, because I think the industry is best served with as much robust competition as possible, but I'm not going to be lining up to hand them cash anytime soon. (Perhaps going free to try was a good idea in that regard, at least it lets people test the combat and basic client stability.)

I would not call the combat a lot of button mashing; there are no insta-recharge skills or any autoattack and it takes longer than a few seconds to bring down a mob.

The open beta part was kind of interesting event; it was only for 2 1/2 days and it was announced about 2 days before it started. Only Europeans that already had been invited to closed beta or people signing up during these 2 days (and only from 11 European countries) were able to get into open beta.

I think the game itself has potential but issues around the publishers of the game (4 of them just for Europe) may hurt them.